


If You've Got Some Faith (Then You Are Faithful)

by J (j_writes)



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mercury Seven AU - 18 significant drinks in the history of US manned spaceflight</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You've Got Some Faith (Then You Are Faithful)

**Author's Note:**

> completed for the [toinfinity](http://toinfinity.dreamwidth.org/) challenge. extended notes [here](http://jai.dreamwidth.org/484711.html).
> 
> ("Minor Character Death" tag in reference to nonexplicit scenes dealing with the Apollo 1 fire)

_and here we are, far beyond reason_  
 _a million fires, a million holes cut in the sky_  
 _and there we were, saints and sightseers_  
 _a million runway lights to bring us through the night_

 

PROLOGUE: KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, 1998

"In the _Life_ magazine archives," Wright began, then paused, looking to the side of the camera at the reporter. "This is the only interview I'm going to do today," he told him, "so I'm going to give it to you straight." At the reporter's nod, he looked back into the lens. "In the _Life_ magazine archives," he repeated, "there is a memo to the science and managing editors. It talks about needing a man on the ground, a man embedded in the NASA infrastructure, who is there every step of the way with a camera and a pen, from the first day of selections until the last flight any of those men ever take. A man that the pilots learn to trust implicitly, with everything."

"This memo," the reporter said, "it was written by you."

"It was," Wright agreed.

"And you ultimately became that man."

Wright reached to rest a hand against the camera beside him. "There are somewhere between seven and twenty-nine men you would have to ask if you wanted a real answer to that, and some of them haven't been in a position to answer you for a long time. What I _can_ tell you is that I tried my very hardest. In fact, I spent a whole lifetime trying to do exactly that."

  
____________________________

 

_"Most people who know me know I'm not the hero type." – Brad Colbert_

"He's over there again." Brad had been casting glances over Nate's shoulder for the past few minutes, his eyes darting from his food up to the table in the corner and back again, and Nate was almost relieved when he lent voice to the thought, stabbing a piece of steak violently. "Stubborn fuck, isn't he?"

"He's just doing his job, Colbert," Nate said mildly. The reporter had been hovering around them for a week, initially approaching each of them individually, and after that just observing, inconspicuous enough to not bother anyone, but not trying to hide, appearing in the restaurants they had come to frequent during the selection process, conversing pleasantly with them at bars or over breakfast. "Like it or not, we're news."

"Not yet, we're not," Brad objected. "And it's bad luck to assume that we're going to be."

Ray appeared behind Brad, reaching over him to set down a beer for each of them. "Are you going on about jinxes again?" he asked. He waved cheerily towards the table in the corner. "Going to creep around in the shadows, Reporter, or do you want to come let some real live heroes buy you a drink?" He lifted an extra glass in the man's direction.

"Ray," Brad growled warningly, but the reporter was already packing up his things and shuffling over to wave at the chair next to Nate.

"If you don't mind?" he asked.

"Actually – " Brad began, but Ray cut him off smoothly.

"As long as you don't mind that we're going to tell you absolutely bupkis about what we're doing here."

"The usual, then," the reporter said agreeably. "I do have a name, you know," he added as he took a seat. "You don't have to call me 'Reporter.' I don't call you 'astronaut,' Person."

Brad was frowning slightly, but kept his mouth shut, so Nate replied instead. "That's probably for the best, seeing as how none of us _is_ an astronaut."

"Yet," Wright replied with a shrug. "I'm not a betting man, but if I were, this table would be where my money went."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Fick said, "but with respect, you've been here for about thirteen seconds. Forgive us if we don't put a whole lot of stock in your opinion."

"Fair assessment, Lieutenant," Wright agreed.

"You're a civilian," Nate reminded him. "Call me Nate."

"See, that, right there," Ray pointed out. "Reporter's not your name, it's your rank. I'm just doing my part to remind everyone where you fall in the hierarchy around here."

"That's helpful, Person, thanks," Wright replied dryly. His eyes shifted to Brad with interest. "I don't believe we've met," he said. "Evan Wright, _Life_ magazine." He held out his hand and Brad shook it politely but distantly.

“Brad Colbert, here,” Ray said, slapping his hands onto Brad's shoulders and squeezing until he winced, “was born into the wrong century.”

Brad ducked Ray's hands, shaking his head. “You’re so full of shit, Ray,” he said, but looked a little pleased at the characterization.

"Being here is an affront to his warrior spirit," Nate explained to Wright, who nodded consideringly.

"Why do it, then?" he asked.

"He's here to keep me out of trouble," Ray answered for him. "Make sure none of the other guys get on the wrong side of my fists of fury." He brandished them to make his point.

"Doesn’t sound like a very compelling reason to me," Wright said, eyeing Brad. "Take Person, here. He's here because this is the biggest adrenaline rush your generation's going to have to offer. He got into testing planes for the danger, and he's going to ride that as far as it will take him. And Fick," Wright looked over at him and shrugged. "He likes a puzzle. What bigger puzzle is there than trying to design a team and hunk of metal that's going to carry mankind to the stars?" He nodded towards the notebook tucked into Nate's breast pocket. "There's a lot of plans scribbled into that little thing, and I guarantee you that some of them are going to make it into a spacecraft some day." He leaned on the table, looking at Brad intently. "So how about you? What's your story?"

Brad returned his look steadily. "I like machines," he replied, flat and honest. "I like taking them apart, I like putting them back together, and I like flying them. That's it. That's all there is."

"Bullshit," Ray said. He turned to Wright conspiratorially. "Iceman here wants to be a hero."

"Who doesn't?" asked Brad. "What I want is irrelevant. What I _am_ , why I'm here? I'm an engineer. That's why." He looked at Wright. "You want a compelling story, look somewhere else."

Ray elbowed him. "You should be a little nicer to Life," he said. "This is the man who's going to make us all into _stars_."

Wright smiled and shook his head. "I think you're confused about what my purpose is around here," he said. "My job isn't to turn you into stars. I'm just here to document it. You men are going to be doing that all on your own."

 

_"Public Relations for NASA made it clear: The press were not welcome." – Evan Wright_

Finding out that the prospective astronauts were headed to survival training in Nevada was the easy part. Finding out the precise location proved to be more difficult.

"I'm sorry, Reporter," Patrick had said, shrugging him off. "You know we can't tell you that."

"I know," Evan had replied amenably, and he'd booked himself a flight to Reno regardless.

He waved to Espera from the desk as he checked into the same hotel as them, nodded politely to Colbert and Reyes as he passed them in the hall, and when he went downstairs to the hotel bar that night, he slipped the bartender a fat stack of bills and told her to keep the men's drinks coming. It was only a matter of time until he heard it, Trombley jostling into Person and declaring how his scores at a site a few miles outside of the city were going to flatten Person's. Evan carefully pretended not to hear, deep in conversation with the man to his left, and shortly afterwards, he slipped out of the bar and back to his room, packing up his bags and cameras.

He stopped on the road halfway to the site in the morning, buying a huge carafe of coffee and a tray full of mugs off the perplexed staff of a diner, and when the transport rolled up to the site full of laughing and hollering pilots, there was Evan, with the tray and carafe balanced carefully on the hood of his car.

"Good morning, boys," he called, waving cheerfully. "Coffee, anyone?"

 

_"Here again, they were all different. There were no two of them alike." – Doc Bryan_

Patrick was already there when Brad pulled into the hotel parking lot, leaning against the side of his car, studying a business card that looked suspiciously similar to the one pressed carefully into Brad's pocket. Brad pulled up next to him, shutting down his bike.

"This better not be one of Person's fucking jokes," he said, pulling off his helmet.

Patrick looked up, relief flooding his face. "Oh, thank god," he said, "you're here too. I was starting to think this was some kind of Soviet hit job or something."

Brad shrugged. "Still could be, I guess." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his own card. "Who knows, maybe we'll be headline news tomorrow. Someone should have called Life so he could get the exclusive."

Pappy smiled a little thinly. "You think someone's fucking with us?"

"No," Brad told him. "I don't." He gestured to the door of the hotel. "You want to go first, or should I?" Pappy wavered, so Brad went for the door. "See you in there," he said.

"Hope so," Pappy said quietly behind him.

The lobby wasn't crowded, but there were people around - businessmen, mostly, having conversations around the perimeter, and no one was in the elevator as Brad boarded it. The ride was endless, Brad watching his reflection in the mirror as it rose. Years of being a test pilot, months of training, and it all came down to this one moment, to the ding of the bell as the doors slid open and he found himself in an empty hallway.

His shoes echoed against the carpet. He expected to hear voices as he reached the end of the hall, but the room was quiet as he pushed open the door and peered around it.

"Brad motherfucking Colbert!" Ray said, bouncing to his feet and crossing to the door to shake Brad's hand heartily and press a glass of scotch into his hand. "It's about time. Welcome to the party."

Brad eyed him. "This isn't you, is it?" He looked around the room. Poke Espera and Rudy Reyes were in intense conversation at the other end of the table, the bottle between them with only one empty tumbler remaining beside it. Nate was there, playing with his tie. He nodded at Brad as he caught his eye. Trombley was beside Nate, looking young and nervous. "You're not planning something?"

Ray seemed to be wavering between fucking with him and not, and came down on the side of not. "It's not me, my man," he assured him. "We're either about to get very good news or very bad news. I'd take the scotch as an indicator, but that could really go either way."

"It's good scotch," Nate offered. "Think that means anything?"

Brad settled down next to Ray as the door opened again and Pappy stuck his head in. Rudy and Poke's conversation ground to a halt as Rudy looked up and exclaimed, "Old man!" sounding delighted.

Pappy laughed and shook his head, and was about to open his mouth to reply when the door in the back of the room opened, and Godfather stepped in. "Gentlemen," he said, nodding to each of them, and Pappy quickly sat at the end of the table.

"The last few months," Godfather continued, "have not been easy. We have pushed you to your limits. We have stretched the lines of what you thought yourselves capable of, and you have exceeded even your own expectations. We have broken your colleagues. You have lost friends, and competitors, and you have not yet seen the last of it. You will continue to be pushed, you will continue to lose the men beside you, some of them perhaps in much more trying manners than simply washing out of the program. This is not an easy job, gentlemen. In fact, it's one of the hardest jobs this country has ever come up with for its men in uniform. But you are test pilots. This is what you _do_."

Brad swallowed, unblinking, and across the table from him, Trombley held his breath. Even Ray was silent.

"Congratulations, men," Godfather said, and there was a collective sigh of breath from around the table. "The seven of you have been chosen from a pool of hundreds to be the first astronauts of NASA's Mercury Program."

Ray's face was the first one to split into a grin. "Hot _damn_ , sir," he said, and Brad couldn't hold in the laughter that welled up in him at the impassive look that Godfather gave him. Beside Ray, Poke started snickering, and then the whole table was breaking into disbelieving smiles, except for Trombley, who just stared between them all with wide eyes.

"Breathe, kid," Nate said, leaning towards him to clap him on the back. "No need to hold your breath just yet, you're still on Earth."

Trombley gave him a shaky almost-smile, and then the questions started flying - about missions, duties, their families, "the fucking _moon_ , sir - forgive my language."

Brad was pretty sure that Godfather was almost smiling as he held up a hand to cut them all off. "You'll get all of the answers you could want," he assured them, "and more besides. The next few years are going to try every cell in your body, every corner of your mind, and you will be so packed full of information, you're going to be bursting with it. This is only the beginning, men. You were summoned here today to give me the chance to tell you that in a month's time, there is going to be an announcement. Your names and your pictures will be broadcast all over the globe, and you will instantly become American heroes without ever once having stepped into a spacecraft.”

He looked around the room at each of them, holding their eyes until he finally gave a satisfied nod. “ _Then_ , gentlemen,” he said. “ _Then_ , you will start earning it."

 

_"[One of the journalists] asked them how many expected to come back alive. I snapped a picture the moment all hands went up, with Colbert and Reyes demonstrating their confidence by raising both arms." – Evan Wright_

"I've survived three crashes of experimental aircraft," Espera said conversationally as he stood up from taking a long drink at the water fountain. Evan lifted his eyes from checking his cameras to look up at him. "And I've had at least twice that many near-misses."

"That's – " Evan began, but Espera cut him off.

"I'm telling you this, Reporter, not because I think it's information you need, but so that when I tell you that the idea of going out there – " he waved towards the thin curtain at the end of the hall " – scares me completely shitless, you have a good sense of perspective about what that means."

Evan smiled. "Are you going to let me quote you on that?"

"Not a chance," Espera replied. There was a low murmur of conversation from behind the curtain, and the occasional bright flash of a camera bulb. "This is completely unreal."

"Oh, it's real, all right," Colbert replied, appearing from around the corner and clapping Espera on the shoulder. "This is the most real thing you're ever going to do."

"This?" Evan asked. "Not – " he waved a hand, gesturing upward, "the rest of it?"

Colbert shrugged. "This is where it starts, Reporter. You said it yourself, a while back. We're going to make ourselves into stars." He grinned at Espera. "Probably not making the stage fright any better, am I?"

"Not really, Brad, no."

"Good." He slapped Poke's shoulder again and turned down the hallway towards Person. "Get used to it, buddy. The whole world's gonna know your name."

Poke sighed, and Evan gave him a sympathetic look. "It'll be fine," he said. "Just smile, be polite, and give the people what they want."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"A story they can tell." Evan stood, gathering his cameras. "That's all anyone's ever looking for."

Poke shook his head. "You don't get it, man," he said. "I'm a _test pilot_." Evan opened his mouth to ask what that had to do with it, but Poke answered before he could. "The only way people ever learn our names is if we wind up dead." He nodded down the hall, where NASA's PR rep was gathering the astronauts, straightening ties, admonishing Person about something Evan couldn't make out. "Better get in position, Life, or the rest of the world is gonna scoop you."

"Small chance of that," Evan said. He raised the camera in his right hand. "Say cheese."

He didn't publish the photo, ultimately. The lighting was too dark, the expression on Espera's face too young and apprehensive to make a good presentation to the public. Instead, Evan stuck it in an envelope and mailed it to Poke, scrawling on the back, _the last known photo of Tony Espera, ordinary citizen_.

 

_"I was just going to work long enough to save some money to go to college…[but] nobody in their right mind would leave those astronauts." – Walt Hasser_

“Sir?” The knock on his door was tentative, and Brad looked up from his scribbling, blinking owlishly.

“Walt?” he replied.

“Do you...need anything?”

Brad blinked slowly at him. “You know, I’m not quite sure _what_ your function is, Hasser, but do I _look_ like I need anything?”

Walt colored slightly. “I’m only asking, sir, because it’s late. And I’m going to go home, if there’s nothing left you’d like me to do.”

Brad took in the sight of the window, which was dark. “Oh,” he said. He looked at his watch. He blinked a few times, and looked at it again. “Christ, what are you still doing here?”

“Seeing if there’s anything you need?” Walt offered.

Brad scrubbed at his forehead with a hand. “You start working on that principle, and you’re going to live here,” he said. “We all need something, all the time. You got a family?”

“A wife,” he said. A smile tugged at his lips. “She’s pregnant.”

“Go _home_ ,” Brad told him, shooing him towards the door.

“Yes, sir,” Walt agreed. He hesitated with one arm into his coat, though, looking at Brad like he wanted to say something else.

“What is it?” Brad prompted.

“It’s...Lieutenant Fick, sir,” Walt said. “Do you think...should somebody check on him?”

“Don’t worry, Gunny ‘s boys would have noticed if there was a dead body in his office by now.” Walt looked scandalized, and Brad stifled a sigh. “Go home,” he said, waving at the door. “I’ll take him some coffee, see if he’s grown a beard yet.” At Walt's worried expression, he added, “I _promise_.”

“All right, sir,” he finally agreed. “Good night.” He pulled his coat around him and ducked out the door.

Brad worked for a while longer, until his legs started cramping under the low table. He stood and stretched, making a few laps around the room, looking at his diagrams upside down for a while. They looked more functional that way, which struck him as less than a good sign. He shoved them off to the other end of the table and let himself out into the dark hallway. His shoes echoed against the floor as he headed down the long corridor, then up two flights of stairs, then back to the southwest corner of the building. Gunny’s office was tucked away there, almost an afterthought, since he spent almost all of his time in Florida anyway.

Brad considered knocking, but pushed the door open instead. A dim desk lamp was the only thing lighting the room, and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust before he realized that every vertical and horizontal surface was covered in diagrams, charts, floorplans of aircraft carriers, models and blueprints of the capsule from every conceivable angle. And in the middle of the desk, on top of a stack of books and an open lab notebook, fingers still clutching his pen, was Nathaniel Fick, fast asleep, a pair of glasses Brad had never seen before pressing into his face at a clearly uncomfortable angle.

His lips were parted just a little, and he let out a tiny sigh on each exhale, making the pages under him flutter. Brad breathed out a laugh, then padded forward softly to reach out and tug at Nate’s glasses, pulling them off and folding them carefully, setting them aside. It was the noise of them clicking against the wood surface of the desk that woke Nate, and he reached up to brush at his face with the back of his hand, blinking into the darkness.

He let out a low questioning noise, and the pen slipped from his other hand, clattering against the desk loudly in the silence of the room. “Oh,” he said foggily, and sat up, rubbing his eyes and blinking at Brad. “Morning.”

Brad laughed. “Not yet,” he said. “Still night.”

“Ah.” Nate leaned towards the clock, squinting, then nodded. “Night. Okay.” He turned back to Brad and frowned. “You’re back.”

“I am,” Brad agreed.

“I thought you were at the Cape.”

“I was.”

Nate wrinkled his nose. “It’s Tuesday?” he asked warily, like he didn’t quite want the answer.

“It’s Wednesday,” Brad corrected him, then waved at the clock. “For seven more minutes.” Nate groaned. “You know, if you actually did your work in the office, you’d know exactly what day it is. In fact, they’ve hired us a secretary for exactly that reason, I think.”

Nate made a face. “Reason number one why I’ve commandeered Gunny’s,” he said. “A _secretary_ , Brad, can you believe that. Like seven guys working out of one office wasn’t bad enough. You see what I have to deal with here?” he waved a hand encompassing the swirl of letters and dimensions and logistics that encompassed him. “I can’t do this in there, there’s no way.”

Brad nodded, leaning over to pick up a helicopter flight plan. “I don’t envy you this job, I have to say.”

Nate sighed. “Can’t say I’d want yours either, though,” he admitted. “How did it go with the engineers at the Cape?”

“Slowly.” Brad toed the edge of the desk and looked at Nate over it. “It’s all going too damn slowly.”

“Not enough hours in the day,” Nate agreed.

Brad made a face. “And too many people having opinions.”

Nate smiled. “Pappy still on you about the steering?” he asked.

“Him and half the engineers,” Brad said. “That’s the problem with him being out there all the time, he’s got the means to convince people he’s right.”

Nate waved vaguely at the door. “Go get the plans,” he said. “Let me take a look at them.”

Brad raised an eyebrow. “You think you can help?” he asked dubiously.

Nate shrugged. “With the engineering?” he asked. “Not a chance. With convincing people you’re right?” He grinned. “Hell yes, I can do that.”

“Should have been a lawyer instead of a pilot,” Brad said, smiling back. “You’re going to end up with a thirteen-point plan on how to get people to not only fly the damn capsule the way you think they should, but make them think it was their own goddamn idea to do it that way.”

“Point one,” Nate said, “Brad motherfucking Colbert designed it. Points two through thirteen: see point one.”

Brad stood, then circled the desk to offer Nate a hand up. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve got a coffeemaker, circulating air, and an office that’s got no one in it but me.”

“You make a compelling argument,” Nate conceded, and ignored Brad’s hand, but got to his feet anyway.

“And I’ve got a bike that I’m going to use to drive you home in - “ Brad checked his watch. “One hour. No more.”

Nate made a face. “We’ll see,” he said.

“If I don’t make you get some sleep, I’m going to have to face the wrath of our new secretary,” Brad explained.

Nate looked at him sidelong as he closed the door to Gunny’s office behind them. “You’re a test pilot, and you’re afraid of our secretary.”

“Not afraid, no,” Brad replied. “But I think he’s made friends with Ray. That can only end badly.”

“Oh dear,” Nate said. “Okay, scratch all other plans. First, we have to figure out how to make someone else into a good influence for him. _Then_ maybe we can do our jobs.”

The next morning found Walt Hasser pushing open the door to the office to find not one but two astronauts slumped over asleep on top of mountains of paperwork. He sighed, shook his head, and leaned over Brad to start the coffee pot.

 

_"If the searchlights were on, we felt pretty confident driving in, because it meant somebody was out there doing something." – Nate Fick_

It was somewhere between too late and too early when Nate heard the rumbling of an engine outside his window. He rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, waiting for the noise to pass, but instead the engine revved once, twice.

"Mother _fucker_ ," he mumbled with his mouth full of pillowcase.

He padded out to the porch in his bare feet and leaned on the railing, giving Colbert a dead-eyed stare learned from years of Marine training. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" he asked.

"Do you have any idea what day it is?" Brad returned, and Nate thought about it, then shrugged.

"Not really," he admitted. "Does it matter?"

"Not much." Brad patted the back of his bike. "Put some shoes on, LT. We're going to a show."

"No," Nate corrected him, " _I'm_ going back to bed. Some of us have work to do in the morning."

"Last I heard, some of us had been issued orders not to show their face in the morning, since they hadn't left the office in close to a week."

Nate cursed under his breath. "Fucking Hasser."

Brad leaned against the handlebars and gave Nate an expectant look. "Waiting, here."

"I'm valuable property of the U.S. Military, Colbert," Nate pointed out, eyeing the bike. "You damage me in any way on that thing, and they're going to own your ass."

"They already own my ass," Brad reminded him. "And they've decided to send it into space. Can't say I consider that to be too bad a deal."

Nate shifted from foot to foot, watching a dim sliver of light cast shadows across the hotel parking lot. "This is not a good idea," he informed Brad, then turned on his heel and went back inside to get pants. He emerged with two mugs of coffee in his hands and stood on the porch holding one out until Brad joined him, leaning against the railing next to him and drinking the coffee in silence, watching the marshlands come slowly alive with light and sound around them.

The sun continued to rise as they made their way towards base on nearly empty roads. Brad took a sharp turn at one point, veering off down a road Nate had never noticed, and Nate stopped trying to track their movement, just holding on and letting himself go for a ride. He felt like it had been years since he'd done that – lifetimes, maybe – and he was almost disappointed when Brad pulled the bike to a stop at the shoulder of the road and poked a sharp elbow back into Nate's side.

"You awake back there?" he asked.

Nate cracked his neck. "Kind of," he replied.

"Good enough." Brad nudged him again until he climbed off the bike, stretching his legs. He followed, propping himself against the side of it with the kind of long-legged grace that the magazines ate right up. Nate found himself wishing for a camera, to capture the moment of Brad looking uncharacteristically relaxed in the early morning light.

He checked his watch. "Almost time," he said. "I'd have brought us a couple of beers, but, well." He waved his watch at Nate. "I guess it's more coffee time."

"It's always coffee time," Nate pointed out.

Brad laughed. "And they wonder how you work the hours you do."

"Subsisting on caffeine and ambition," Nate replied easily.

Brad chuckled. "You steal that from one of Reporter's stories?"

"Maybe, I don't remember. Sounds like him, doesn't it?"

The horizon was unnaturally lit off to their left, and Nate stood watching the lights play across the horizon for a few moments. "I've never seen it from here," he said. "It feels wrong, almost, not to be there."

Brad shrugged. "Gunny's men have it under control."

"They always do," Nate said. "But still."

"Still," Brad agreed. He gave Nate a sidelong glance. "Found this spot with Rudy when we were fishing one time. I thought maybe watching would be preferable to sleeping through it, if we can't be down there."

There was a low rumble in the distance, and Nate felt the countdown starting in his head. He saw Brad's eyes snap to the launch site, and knew he was doing the same, holding his breath as he checked off the mental boxes of the beats that needed to be hit before the test rocket could take off.

"Go," Brad mouthed a few seconds later, and a beam of light shot up beneath the rocket as it lifted towards the sky, the ground rattling under their feet.

They watched it arc upwards, and Nate slowly let out his breath. "It's good."

"Next one," Brad said. He clapped Nate on the shoulder. "Next one's going to be one of us."

Nate looked at him, raising his eyebrows. "You don't know that."

"No," Brad replied. "I don't. But it doesn't matter, really. You, me, Poke, whoever – one of us goes next. And we all made that." He gestured toward the trail of the rocket above them. "We designed pieces of that fucker, the doors, the gauges, the landing gear. Some of your ideas just went up into space, Nate."

Nate felt a smile tugging at his lips. "Brad Colbert," he said, elbowing him in the side, "are you a closet idealist?"

"Not me, no, sir," Brad replied. "Just an engineer."

"These days, in this job, I think it might be hard to be one without the other."

Brad didn’t reply, but when Nate snuck a look at him, his eyes were still tracing the path of the booster rocket across the sky.

 

_"Go blow up." – Brad Colbert_

The elevator rattled as it rose, and Nate counted switches in his head.

He knew the liftoff sequence by heart, had been through it forward and backward – and had, in fact, been the one who had finally sat down with Gunny Wynn and written the whole thing down for everyone to review over and over again and become familiar with. He could recite it in his sleep – and had, on one of the scouting missions he and Rudy had taken when planning the recovery teams.

He rehearsed anyway, his fingers twitching through the motions, because it was comforting, reliable. A known value, in a mission full of unknowns.

Gunny met him at the top of the elevator, and when Nate passed by him to a clap on the shoulder, there was Brad, climbing out of his capsule. They faced each other, Nate in his suit, Brad in the clean white of the pad crew, and Nate had the fleeting thought that there was no one he would rather see checking his instrumentation before liftoff.

"How's she looking?" he asked.

"Not a scratch on her," Brad replied, then pointed a gloved finger at Nate's mask. "And you'd better return her in the same condition."

"Yes, sir." Nate saluted mockingly, earning a smile.

Brad sobered, stepping aside to allow Nate access to the open hatch. "Good flight, Fick," he said, sounding genuine. Nate nodded in thanks and stepped towards the capsule. "Hey, if you make it out there, and come back in one piece, I'll buy you a beer."

Nate stopped short. "A beer?" He turned to Gunny. "You hear that? This man offered to buy me a beer if I make it into space."

Gunny was smirking. "A generous offer if I ever heard one."

"Colbert," Nate rounded on him again. "When I land, you better buy me a whole _bar_ full of beers."

"The hangover of a lifetime, you've got it, sir," Brad agreed. He stepped aside and nodded toward the capsule. "Now, if you don't mind, we're kind of on a schedule here." He reached to clap Nate on the shoulder. "Go blow up."

Nate spent his last few minutes on the ground going through the steps again, his fingers hovering near the switches, and the last thing the saw before the hatch closed him off from the rest of the world was Brad giving him and his spacecraft a thumbs up.

The mix of sounds in the capsule was oppressive, and Nate closed his eyes for a brief moment, capturing them, slowly categorizing each one as he ran through the vast list of parts that would be taking him thousands of miles above the earth. "Don't fuck this up, Fick," he said aloud.

Days later, sitting in front of a bank of television cameras next to Walter Cronkite, he would tell the American people that he had been so caught up in the details of the launch that he hadn't considered the historical significance of the first sentence he uttered in space. It would be half a joke and half an apology as he leaned against the desk and told the cameras with a tiny self-deprecating smile about Brad hovering around his capsule like a mother hen, checking and double checking and quadruple checking that everything was in working order.

"And those words?" Cronkite prompted.

Nate couldn't hold back the grin any longer. "Those words were 'Tell Colbert he owes me a beer.'"

 

_"I can call Patrick on the radio and say, 'Hey, Pappy, what's all this shaking and rattling I'm getting here?' …He has studied the bird so well that he can come back and say, 'I've noticed that myself, Rudy. Don't worry about it. That's just the hootenanny valve on the watchamacallit fluttering a little…It doesn't mean a thing. Forget it.' That's all I would need to know." – Rudy Reyes_

"Chief Astronaut." The laugh Pappy let out made Rudy ache in ways he hadn't felt in years. "Bit of an ironic title, don't you think, for a guy who does what I do for a living?"

"Patrick – " Rudy began, but Pappy cut him off.

"They grounded me, you know," he said in a tone of deep confession. "Four months ago. That injury I took to my leg in training, it busted up my back too. They don't know if they'll ever let me go up."

"I know."

Pappy's eyes snapped up. "Doc told you?" he asked.

Rudy shook his head. "He'd never," he assured Pappy. He let a smile play at the edges of his lips, just briefly. "It was Walt."

Pappy let out a breath and drained his glass. "Of course Walt figured it out."

"He figures out everything," Rudy agreed. "Don't hold it against him, it's what they pay him for." He lifted the bottle to top off Pappy's drink. "So," he continued, "Chief Astronaut."

Pappy choked out another laugh. "You believe that shit? It came from Godfather himself, apparently. Wants to build some kind of structure into this outfit. It's a little late for that, if you ask me. Of course, no one did."

Rudy shrugged. "It doesn't sound like such a bad idea to me," he said. "I heard how you ran the control room for Fick's flight. That mission went like clockwork, and a lot of that was because of you. I know if it were me up there in that bird, it would make me feel about a million times better to know that you're the man on the ground, calling the shots."

Pappy shook his head. "Not everyone's you, Rudy."

"No," Rudy agreed. "But no one knows that machine like the seven of us." He eyed Pappy seriously. "You want to turn it down?"

"I want – " he shook his head. "I don't know what I want." He let out a laugh. "No, fuck it. I want a gold rocket on my lapel, same as the rest of you."

"Someday, man." Rudy reached over to clasp Pappy earnestly on the shoulder. "Someday, you're going to have that. And until then? There's not much we all agree on, you know that. But trusting you to be our voice on the ground? That's something every one of us can get behind."

A ghost of a smile finally pulled at Pappy's mouth – a real smile, one that eased the tightness in Rudy's chest a little. "Then you've all lost your minds," he said.

"A long _long_ time ago, my friend," Rudy agreed. "Luckily, that's the kind of thing they look for in our profession."

Pappy lifted his glass and swirled the liquid around before holding it out to clink it against Rudy's. "To sheer insanity," he said.

"To our Chief Astronaut," Rudy countered.

Pappy shrugged. "Sounds like the same thing to me."

 

_"We never worried about being polite. There was no time for that. We were big boys, and we could take the loud voices. But through it all we remained good neighbors. We have dug postholes for each other's fences." – Rudy Reyes_

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" Brad asked, peering out his window at the nondescript dirt road rolling by them.

Ray gave him a withering look. "I'm a _navigator_ , Brad."

"And it's starting to look like you're going to navigate us right into a ditch."

"Good thing I didn't let you bring your bike, huh?" Ray said, peeking at Brad out of the corner of his eye, and Brad grumbled something wordless in reply. Ray frowned, and the car skidded sideways a little before righting itself. Brad grabbed the dashboard.

"What the shit, Person," he said. "Keep your eyes on the road. I know I've got a pretty face, but you don't have to stare at it while you're driving. It'll still be here when we stop."

Ray made a face at him and swerved the car again. Behind them, Poke leaned on his horn and yelled something indistinct out his window. Beside him in the passenger seat, Nate was laughing and shaking his head.

"Look," Ray said, turning his frown on Brad before looking back to the road. "You didn't have to come, you know. You don't have a whole family to relocate. You can get an apartment anywhere in Houston you like. Hell, you could probably afford to have one here _and_ one at the Cape."

Brad shrugged. "I wanted to look," he said.

"Look." Ray repeated. "There's nothing to look at but some plots full of dirt."

"Could be interesting dirt."

"Fuck geology training, man, it's going to turn us all into a bunch of eggheads," Ray mumbled, but he was smiling. "Oh, hey." They turned a corner, past a cluster of trees, and there was a sign pinned across a billboard that stood over a stretch of land no different from any of the others they had passed, welcoming the astronauts and their families to their new home. "What'd I tell you about my navigation skills, huh? Flawless."

Brad snorted. "The fact that the realtor wrote you out directions that Rudy's six year old could follow has _nothing_ to do with it, right?"

"You want me to leave you on the side of the road on the way out of here?" Ray asked him. "Because I'll do it. That dirt pit over there might become your new home a lot sooner than you think."

Brad got out of the car and stretched, and behind them, Poke pulled to a stop and climbed out. "Oh, no," he said. "Oh _hell_ no. I've played this game before, and it ends in all of us living in barracks no better than cardboard boxes." He waved his hand around. "They _say_ it's going to be a development, a real nice neighborhood, and then as soon as your name's signed to the papers, they're gonna flip a crate over, write your name on it, and call it home."

Rudy came up behind him and slung an arm over his shoulders. "Let the man have his say," he said, nodding towards the realtor in the ugly jacket who was making his way towards them. "If you don't like it, live somewhere else. Trombley's doing it."

"And me," Pappy said.

Nate frowned at him. "You have more reason than any of us to take one of these places," he objected. "You're going to be in Houston almost full time."

Pappy shrugged and looked uncomfortable, but was saved from answering by the realtor approaching and introducing himself. He led them down what he said would be the main road of the development, gesturing to the imaginary sidewalks, painting a picture of a suburban paradise, charming houses, trees planted along the road, "fucking white picket fences," Ray muttered, shaking his head. It wasn't until the floorplans of the houses came out of their case that anyone started to show any interest at all.

"This one isn't half bad," Rudy said, holding up the plans for the lot they were standing in front of. It would someday be the end of a cul du sac, backed up against the trees beyond, and he lay the blueprint flat, looking from it to the plot of land, then back again. "My wife would kill for this kitchen," he said.

He tucked the floorplan under his arm, and reached for the one for the house next door. "Look, Patrick. A pool," he said, and tilted the plans towards Pappy. "And this one's got another bedroom. You could have an office _and_ rooms for your girls and your boys." He handed the paper over to Pappy and stretched the other one out beside it. "We could take out this fence," he said, pointing to the divider between the two yards. "Have one big backyard for the kids. A pool _and_ a barbecue pit."

Ray started snickering, and Brad elbowed him. "Picking out china patterns," he said derisively, but he lost the smirk a few houses later when he found himself looking consideringly at one of the plans the realtor pulled out of the box. "This is...not bad," he said.

"What do you think, Poke?" Brad asked as the realtor packed up his things, shaking hands with them all. "Better than a cardboard box?"

Poke shrugged. "I'm not signing my name to a thing until I see a finished product," he said, but with less rancor than before. "We'll let you guys get settled in, see what kind of horror stories you come into work with."

"Well hell, we're guinea pigs on the job, why not be them at home, too?" Ray said, jostling against Poke as they headed for the cars.

Brad dropped back next to Nate and smiled at the kind of dazed expression on his face. "Ever going to get those stars out of your eyes, Commander?" he asked.

Nate blinked and looked at him, smiling a little sheepishly. "I never thought about owning a house before," he admitted. "It seemed like something that wouldn't make sense until I had a wife and kids."

"And now?" Brad asked.

Nate shrugged. "Having all these guys around, it might be kind of like having family there."

"Yeah, the kind of family you can't get rid of even if you want to," Brad said, grinning.

"Can always go to the Cape," Nate replied.

"There's always that."

"What about you?" Nate asked. "Going to go Trombley's route, and look someplace else?"

Brad shrugged. "I don't have to worry about moving kids from a school district like he does," he said, "and bachelor officer quarters don't have nearly enough space for the amount of work I take home with me. Place like this, I could have an office _and_ a room for all the spare parts. Maybe I didn't fall in love with any of the places quite as hard as you did with that one over there - " he waved toward the corner of the development where Nate had spent a long time pacing around with a plan in his hand, "but I wouldn't mind some more space than I'd get on base."

"So," Nate said. "We're all going to be neighbors."

"Looks like," Brad said.

"Better not fucking drive that bike of yours up and down the street at all hours of the night if I end up here," Poke said, dropping back to join them. "My wife will disable the thing so you never drive again."

"See, this is the problem with marrying a pilot," Ray told him, turning to walk backwards in front of them. "She knows just as much as you do about your machines. My wife wouldn't even _think_ of touching my car."

"Or your anything else," Pappy said, and ducked out the way as Ray took a swing at him.

Brad caught up to Pappy as they reached the cars, and leaned against his driver's side door so he couldn't get in. "So, you're thinking about it, right?" he asked, watching Rudy get Ray into a headlock, sending up a cloud of dust.

"I'm thinking about it," Pappy agreed, looking uneasy. "Look, Colbert, as much as I'd love to be neighbors with you guys - "

Brad cut him off. "Rudy's not going to have it any other way, you know."

Pappy smiled with fond exasperation. "I know." He shrugged, the troubled expression returning. "It's astronaut housing, Brad."

"It's _program_ housing," Brad corrected him. "And _you're_ an astronaut, same as the rest of us. _Chief_ astronaut, even, if I remember correctly." He backed off the door and clapped Pappy on the shoulder. "You should be here," he told him. As he headed back to Ray's car, he turned and added, "otherwise Fruity Rudy's going to make somebody else share his yard with him, and I sure as hell don't want it to be me."

Pappy was laughing as he lowered himself into his car, and Brad counted that as a success. He cranked down his window as Ray started the car, and they took off in a caravan of dust and music, each car swerving and dodging to try to be first out of the gate.

 

_"Nate Fick was a hero, no doubt about that. But whenever people call Fick the first American in space, I like to remind them of a chimpanzee who beat him to it." – Evan Wright_

The phone was ringing as Nate pushed open the front door of his hotel room, and he fumbled his suitcase and a six-pack onto the bed before he answered, tucking the receiver against his shoulder. "How's Bermuda?" he asked without preamble.

"Take this with all the respect I intend, sir, but this is fucking _bullshit_ ," Brad replied.

Nate didn't bother to hide a smile. "Colbert," he greeted pleasantly, and cracked open one of the beers.

"A _monkey_ , Nate. An American orbited the earth today, and it was an American _primate_."

"So are you," Nate reminded him. Brad let out an inarticulate noise, and Nate didn't bother trying to hide the smile from his voice as he said, "Go for a surf, work off some of that energy."

Brad's voice was sulky. "What do you think I've been doing since the little motherfucker landed, Commander? Sitting on my ass?"

"Hell if I know what you guys get up to at the tracking stations," Nate reminded him. "I'm only ever in Houston anymore, or at the Cape." He paused, grinning. "Oh, and there was that one time where I was in space," he added, just to needle Brad.

"Rub it in, why don't you?" Brad grumbled.

Nate dragged the phone across the room, stretching out the cord to its limit, kicking down the doorstop and propping the door open. "Gladly," he said. He set his beer and the phone down, settling beside them and leaning against the wall of the hotel, watching the sky turn pink. "It's one of the things I do best."

"That's because you're a dick," Brad said, adding a "sir," as an afterthought.

Nate smiled, then sobered. "They have good reasons, you know," he said seriously. Brad made an unhappy noise of assent. "If the little guy landed burned to a crisp or something, I'd rather it be him than you."

"He didn't," Brad said flatly.

"No," Nate agreed. "He didn't. And isn't that going to make you feel better when you're sitting on top of that rocket?"

"I'm a test pilot," Brad reminded him. "If I feel good about what I'm doing, I'm doing something wrong."

Nate laughed, taking a sip of his beer. "You make a good point," he agreed. "But seeing as how I'm going to be the guy on the other end of your comms, I'd be pretty damn appreciative if you don't leave me there talking to myself while they're dragging your capsule out of the water, if it's all the same to you."

Brad was quiet. "They made you my capcom," he said finally. "They didn't tell me."

"I think they just decided," Nate said. "Pappy told me today."

"That's..." Brad fell silent for a moment, and Nate imagined him on a hotel balcony in Bermuda, looking at the sky thoughtfully. "I'm glad," he finally settled on.

"Me too," Nate agreed. "Although if I'm going to be in Houston, I won't be there to check over your capsule like you did with mine."

"Guess we're just going to have to believe that Gunny Wynn knows how to do his own damn job," Brad said dryly.

"Maybe I'll have Poke check up on him."

"That's the kind of confidence NASA would love to see you having in your men."

Nate smiled, and was quiet. He could see in the distance that the spotlights were still on at the launchpad. "I know it pisses you off," he said eventually, "the monkey thing. But you're going to be the first American around the world, either way. Brad motherfucking Colbert, written into the history books. Who would have thought?"

"My mom," said Brad, and Nate laughed.

"Yeah," he agreed. "That's what moms do, I guess."

Brad sighed on the other end of the phone. "Nate," he said, sounding tired. "If the Russians beat us, because of this..." he trailed off.

"I know, you're gonna rip Godfather and Pappy new ones. I get it," Nate said. He tipped his head back against the wall. "But you're going to be alive to do it." He sipped his beer. "And even if they do, we're _still_ going to have a man on the moon before them."

"You believe that?" Brad asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Brad, you've met our guys," Nate reminded him. "How could I possibly believe anything else?"

"You better be right," Brad said.

"I am."

Nate could tell Brad was smiling, staring off into the distance, as he replied, "You know, when you say it, it doesn't sound quite so hard to believe."

"That's why you keep me around," Nate said.

"Yeah," Brad said quietly. "That's why."

Nate tucked the phone against his shoulder and they sat there on their hotel porches, drinking their beer and watching the sun go down together, a thousand miles apart.

 

_"Godspeed, Brad Colbert." – Ray Person_

_Stunning_ wasn't a word that Brad Colbert made much use of. Neither was _extraordinary_ , or _awe-inspiring_. He had spent the vast majority of his life becoming a man whose awe was not inspired lightly.

"Brad?" Ray prompted in his ear, and Brad let out a breath, squinting in the sudden harsh glare of the sun.

"I've just watched the sun coming up over the edge of the earth," he said, struggling for words. "It's…it's really something, Ray. You should be here to see it."

There was a static crackle of laughter. "I'm hoping to, buddy. I'm hoping to."

He tucked his camera away, the light too bright now to take any more pictures, for fear of damaging the lens. He spent a few moments watching, his eyes nearly closed, looking down at the earth below him, the sun above it. Eventually, he turned away from the window and Ray started talking him through some more of the mission objectives as the light out the window grew brighter, then slowly faded. He tested out some snacks in the weightlessness, squirting water up to catch it in his mouth. As he crossed over onto the dark side of the earth, he was counting down the time left in his mission in his head, the time that remained before he returned to the solid ground, and wishing that he could stretch it out indefinitely, to try to see more, learn more, have more to bring home with him.

"Brad," Ray said, interrupting his thoughts, "I've got a message here to pass on to you from the tracking station in Australia."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Poke says that he thinks you should request hazard pay from the Marines for your flight."

Brad chuckled. "Of course he does. He just wants to set a precedent for when he gets up here."

"That's likely," Ray agreed. "One other thing. He says the whole city of Perth has turned its lights on for you, so keep an eye out for that while you're flying over."

Brad sailed on across the curve of the earth, keeping his eyes on the lights below him, oddly comforted by the thought that some of them had been lit by people who were thinking about him right now, were tracking his path on their televisions and radios, who were standing out in their backyards and lifting their eyes to the sky to try to catch a glimpse of his light as it passed overhead.

He raised a hand, and he waved at the window, just so he could tell people he did, when he returned.

 

_"Ever been to Disneyland? That was definitely an E-ticket ride!" – Ray Person_

"It's all good," Ray said. "I got this."

He could practically see Brad rolling his eyes, thousands of miles below him. _"He's got this,"_ he'd be mimicking to whoever was next to him. _"The last guy who said that ended up with his capsule in the drink."_

Brad still hadn't quite gotten over Trombley losing Liberty Bell 7. "He just _dropped_ it," he'd been complaining just the week before, "in the _ocean_ , like we didn't all put years of our lives into that fucker."

"You can tell Colbert to quit worrying down there," Ray said aloud over the comms. "I'm going to land this baby so soft he won't even hear me coming. Not a scratch on her." He steadied his hand on the controls, breathing in, then out.

"Aurora, ground," he heard Pappy replying. "You're coming in slightly off course – "

"I know, boss, I’m on it," Ray cut him off. Light was streaming by across the darkness outside his window as the capsule thawed, chasing flecks of ice off in a gleaming arc behind him. "Manually correcting, preparing for reentry."

"Communication shutdown in five, four – " Pappy's voice crackled out in static before he reached the last number, and Ray concentrated on the view out his window, pressing a button on the recorder for reentry, and starting to narrate for posterity as he felt himself getting pressed harder and harder into his seat as gravity recaptured him.

"Deploying chutes," he said aloud as he reached out with a shaking hand to press the green button above him. "Moment of truth."

His trajectory had been off hitting atmosphere. He knew it, ground knew it, and at that point, there was fuck all that anyone could do about it but wait. "I want to state for the record," he said to the recorder, "that Brad Colbert is to blame for all of this. If he hadn't been so damn fascinated by the 'fireflies' outside the capsule on his flight, I might not have missed my mark by quite so much, trying to figure it out for him." He closed his eyes. "They're ice, Brad. Frozen bits of atmosphere, flying off of you. That's it, that's all that's out there. Sorry to disappoint you, but at least now you know."

Touchdown was soft – softer than he'd expected from the stories the others had told him, and he still had the presence of mind to shut off the recorder before pumping his fist and letting out a "Fuck _yeah_."

He checked his instruments, and the window, but there was no indication of how far off course he'd landed, or how long the recovery teams would take getting to him. He reached into his emergency kit and pulled out his canteen. "Looks like we might be here for a while, little lady," he said, reaching out to pat the console. He tipped his head back to watch the sunlight streaming in through the window where minutes before there had been only darkness. "Welcome back to Earth," he said quietly.

He took a drink from his canteen, and started to sing to himself, just to pass the time.

 

_"How in the hell can we get to the moon if we can't talk between two buildings?" – Harold Trombley_

"You boys need anything in there?" Patrick asked, leaning to poke his head into the capsule. "Water? Scotch? A film to keep you occupied?"

"How about a bathroom?" Trombley suggested. "A nice big one with a giant bathtub. Maybe an ocean view."

"Open up that panel right there, and we could get a pretty good view," Ed suggested, pointing over Pappy's shoulder towards the wall of the tower.

"I'll suggest that to the engineers," Pappy agreed. "A nice picture window over there, maybe a porch to sit on? Who needs all those switches and buttons anyway? Not you guys."

Trombley shrugged. "They probably don't do anything important, right, boss?"

"Nah," Pappy agreed. "In fact, maybe if we wipe them out, it'll solve some of the comms problems we've been having."

The men sobered a little. "You'll be in the blockhouse for this one?" Trombley asked.

"Yeah, we're going to do our best to figure out why we're having so much trouble hearing you guys."

"You better," Trombley replied. "Or getting to the moon's going to be a real shitshow."

Pappy nodded and stood, passing in the bottle of water he'd brought for them. "We've got your back," he told them. "Hydrate, relax, and do your thing at showtime, all right?"

Trombley saluted him cheekily, and Pappy smiled, tapping reassuringly on the hatch as he turned to leave the tower.

The blockhouse was a study in controlled chaos, too many people performing just enough functions, and he stood at the center of it, headset pressed against his ear, talking the pilots and the pad crew and his own men through their functions, bursts of static interrupting their every communication, words getting lost into black holes of silence between the buildings. Then came the words, indistinct but chilling, crackling down the line and sending the room into a panic of activity.

"Fire," Roger's voice said, "fire in the spacecraft."

 

_"It was a bad day. Worst I ever had." – Larry Shawn Patrick_

Evan went to the hotel bar to find some distraction, and found Patrick instead, hunched over an empty glass and staring into it dully.

"Not now, Life," he said without looking up, and Evan shook his head, settling onto the stool beside him.

"I'm off the job tonight," he said, talking off his tie as a gesture and tucking it into his pocket. "We can do the on the record thing tomorrow. Right now, I'm here for the same reason you are." He nodded at Pappy's glass. "Let me get you another."

Pappy blinked at it, like he hadn't noticed it was empty. "Thanks," he said, and pushed the glass towards the edge of the bar.

"How are you doing?" Evan asked after he ordered for them both.

Pappy looked at him impassively for a moment. "As director of flight operations?" he asked. "Or as one of the guy's only friends in the world?"

"As either."

"I'm..." Pappy considered. "Drunk," he finally decided on. He watched a new glass get set down in front of him, then spun it, watching the light play off the surface. "I was supposed to be in Houston, you know. I wasn't even planning on being here. I flew in this morning because of the communication trouble. The guys wanted me to get a taste of what they'd been facing."

"I know."

"It was routine," Pappy explained, like he thought Evan hadn't gotten all of the details already. "It was a fucking routine test." He took a long sip of his drink. "He tried to give me the mission, you know. I mean, he couldn't, of course, because he's Trombley, not Godfather." He paused, looking pained. "Was," he corrected himself. "We were fishing, last week, before I left for Houston, and he told me that he'd gone to Doc the day he got assigned, to see if my little..." he waved at himself, "problem had gotten cleared up."

"He wanted to be reassigned?" Evan asked, leaning forward.

"No," Pappy said. "He wanted me on his team. He tried to take me to space, Life. You believe that? Little fucker's never thought of anyone else since the day he was born, I don't think, and he went to Doc to see if there was any way he could get me taken off the grounded list."

"That's..." Evan almost smiled. "Unexpected."

"Got that right," Pappy agreed, swallowing down a gulp of his drink. "Nate says you can't change a guy like Trombley. That's what he says. But he never stopped trying to, not really. Can't tell you it ever worked, really, but that. That was...yeah. Unexpected." He was quiet for a moment or two, then said in a strained voice, "They had me be the one pick his wife up from her flight, you know. Since I had met her before, and I guess they thought...familiar face, and all. Couldn't hurt." He shook his head and stared at his reflection on the back wall. "She's..." he trailed off.

"I can imagine," Evan said.

"No," Pappy cut him off, too loud, turning to him with a serious expression. "That's not what I meant. I mean, she is. But I'm saying..." he sighed, and was almost too quiet to hear as he said, "She's so fucking _young_." Evan didn't have an answer to that. "They call me 'old man,' you know," Pappy continued. "And it's funny, usually, because we're all the same age, more or less, except him. But right now, I feel older than I've ever felt in my life."

"You are," Evan said philosophically. "Right now, today, is the oldest you've ever been."

Pappy laughed humorlessly. "Fuck you, Reporter," he said, but when he pushed back his stool and stood, saying, "I need a fucking cigarette," he waited for Evan to join him before he headed for the door.

 

_"I have never been my own favorite subject, and I don't think I've found anything new about myself since I've been in this program. We were asked to volunteer, not to become heroes." – Nate Fick_

He pounded his fists into unyielding bags, lifted more weight than his muscles wanted to allow, ran until his lungs were burning and his legs were shaking, and none of it worked. None of it helped even a little. At the end, as he stood in the shower with icy water running down his face, tipping his head back to drink deeply, all he felt was bone tired.

"Trying to fucking kill yourself?" The question was mild, almost curious.

Nate leaned forward, bracing his arm against the slick tiles and letting his head fall against it. "Do me a favor and fuck off, Colbert," he replied, just as mildly.

"You're worrying some people, you know."

"Yeah?" Nate reached without looking to shut off the tap, the silence sudden and welcome. "Then they can come find me themselves." He ran a hand through his hair, shaking some of the droplets away. "Last I heard, you don't worry about anything."

"Politics, Nate?" Brad asked, sounding somewhere between genuinely questioning and incredulous.

Nate let out a sigh and reached through the curtain for his towel, wrapping it tightly around his waist. "You have any better ideas?" he asked. "Need another body on the engineering crew?"

"How about the moon?" Brad suggested, and Nate let out a twisted laugh, pulling back the curtain to look him in the eye.

"Got called in for a meeting, a few weeks back," he said. "With Godfather."

"Yeah?" Brad asked with the air of someone who had heard all there was to hear from Walt Hasser already.

"Forget it," Nate said.

"So there are some people around here who think you can't cut it anymore," Brad said, holding out his hands. "Who think that the fact that Doc keeps pushing back your dates means that you're an old man, you're washed up, good for nothing but sitting behind a desk and making policy. And what?" He leaned against the wall, looking Nate over. "That pisses you off?"

Nate scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Colbert – " he began, but Brad cut him off.

"No, seriously, tell me. Tell me how _rough_ it is for you, still on the active roster, still with a _chance_ \- "

"I'm not looking for you to feel bad for me, Brad. All I was looking for was a shower."

"Mhmm," Brad said agreeable. "How about Poke? Rudy? Pappy? What are you looking for from them? Because I've got to tell you, Fick, I've heard nothing about you in the past few months that doesn't point to you being a pissy little bitch." He pushed off the wall, into Nate's space. Nate dodged around him and reached for his pants, tugging them on.

"Back off, Colbert. I'm not going to fight you, if that's what you're looking for."

"I’m not looking for anything."

Nate looked up to meet his eyes. "No?" he asked. "You're not looking for a way to make things go back?"

Brad's eyes were cold. "Back?" he replied. "Back to what, exactly?"

"Back to you being on active rotation, for one?"

"That’s what you think this is? You think I want the moon?"

"I think we all want the moon."

Brad shrugged. "Think that if you want," he said, "but one thing I can tell you is there _is_ no going back. Ray's out. Poke's out, Pappy's out, I'm out. And in case you need me to remind you, Trombley's in a box the size of a matchbook. Get the fuck over yourself." He reached for a towel and threw it in Nate's direction. "And get yourself some bandages. Your knuckles are bleeding everywhere."

He left, slamming the door behind him, and Nate's reflection wavered as the mirror beside it shook with the impact. He stood there for a long while, meeting his own eyes in the mirror, pressing the towel to his hand and feeling nothing.

 

_"If the mission didn't succeed, we would have held up the whole program." – Rudy Reyes_

“So,” Evan said, settling down beside Rudy as he watched the video feed of his backup crew in the simulator, setting a bottle of Coke in front of him. “I’ve been hearing some rumors about you.”

Rudy didn’t look at him, but the corner of his mouth twisted into a smile as he reached for the bottle. “About me?” he asked. “Goddamn, if _you’re_ hearing them, everyone must know. What are they saying about me this time?”

Evan watched the backup crew burn up as they hit the atmosphere. Rudy winced. “I’m hearing that NASA offered you everything they’ve got to take this mission.”

Rudy huffed out a laugh. “Well, Pappy offered me his firstborn,” he said. “But he does that every couple of months, for some reason or another.” He sobered. “What’re you asking me, Life?”

Evan shrugged. “I'm not asking anything. Just, they wanted you pretty bad.”

Rudy was quiet for a few moments, watching the screen. “They wanted one of the original seven on this mission,” he allowed. “After Trombley...” he trailed off and shook his head. “They think it’s good for morale, to show we’ve still got it. And I’m all they have to offer anymore. Ray and Poke are done, and no one knows if the flight surgeons are ever going to okay Pappy, Brad, or Nate to go up again. Their options were limited to one guy for this mission, and that guy is me.”

“And after this?” Evan prompted.

“After,” Rudy said as if it were a foreign word. “After...I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his hair, tipping his head back to look up at the ceiling. “Ray and Poke, they got out because of their kids, you know? Got out, got into the private sector. Nate’s talking about going into politics after this, and Brad...he’s probably never going to leave the engineer corps. Pappy’s gonna be flight director til the day he dies, even if he’ll deny that to your face until he’s blue. There’s no one in the world that could do that job like he can, and he knows it. I don’t have an easy retirement option like the rest of them. I don’t know,” he said again, more thoughtfully this time. He glanced at Evan sideways. “Maybe I can get Life to hire me, do some reporting on the program. What do you say, man?”

Evan laughed and looked him over. “Face like that?” he asked. “They’d never go for it. You need to be on TV.”

Rudy smiled appreciatively, then sobered. “I did ask for one thing, you know.”

“In exchange for this flight?” Evan asked, leaning forward. “What was that?”

Rudy was silent for a few moments, tilting his head towards the speaker, listening in on the communications between the simulator and the team running it. Then he sat up and looked at Evan. “Gunny Wynn.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Gunny wasn’t going to be on the pad for Apollo 1, you know,” Rudy said. “I don’t know if you _did_ know that, actually, but it’s true. He wasn’t at the plugs out test because they put in some new guy for the whole mission. So I said I wasn’t going up again unless he was reinstated as Pad Leader.”

“And they went for it?”

“Oh, yeah. They went for it.” Rudy’s smile was rueful as he said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, Life, but I’m Rudy motherfucking Reyes. They were instructed to give me whatever the hell I wanted.”

 

_"On this July twentieth, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine…" – Walter Cronkite_

Reporter took a picture of that night, a copy of which ended up on most of their mantles, and to look at it, there was nothing that made Rudy's living room any different from any other in the country that night, stuffed to overflowing with friends and relations of all ages, each leaning over each other to catch a glimpse of the grainy pictures coming back to them from thousands of miles away. Nate was perched precariously on the arm of the sofa, Rudy and Ray on the floor with the kids, Poke and Brad bracketing the kitchen doorway like parentheses with identical deliberately casual leans.

The only difference was that there were men in that room who knew each year of tiny steps that had been made in getting those two men into that vessel, and how many steps remained in order to bring them home safely. There was an awareness of the risk and cost in that room that few others held, and in the years that followed, it was the understanding of that which made Nate glad he had elected to watch the coverage with his men, instead of at his sister's with her family, or on his own at home on his couch, wearing grooves into his hands with his ragged fingernails.

Instead he was surrounded by family – not all his, but all present, all aware in the same ways that he was. There was silence until Cronkite started speaking, a whole room – a nation, a world – holding its collective breath, and then the kids were asking a million questions, Poke was leaning across the gulf of the doorway to shake Brad's shoulder emphatically, and Nate let out a slow breath, carefully releasing his fingers from where they'd tangled so hard into the blanket on the back of the sofa that they were white and stiff.

"Goddamn, Armstrong," said Ray appreciatively, toasting the television with his beer. "God _damn_." Nate wanted to laugh at the disapproval he saw in some of the faces around him, wanted to tell them that Ray was already censoring himself to a pretty large extent. Instead, he stood and stretched, watching Cronkite laughing on the TV and feeling a matching laugh well up in himself. He let his face split into a grin, and stood there grinning some more as Rudy crushed him into a brief but muscular hug.

The party slowly filtered outwards after that, spilling onto the lawn between Rudy and Pappy's houses. Pappy wasn't there, of course – he was one of Apollo 11's men on the ground at Mission Control – but his wife was on the patio, laughing with Rudy's wife, and Nate had been informed that his kids were some of the ones running around the house, but keeping all of them straight was a lost cause, so he'd decided not to waste brainpower on it. He could feel a headache building behind his eyes – from the TV or the excitement, or maybe from the noise and crowd, so he made his way down the hallway to the relative quiet of Rudy's study. Brad was in there, his back to the door, and Nate hesitated in the doorway just long enough that when Brad spoke, he couldn't pretend he hadn't heard him.

"Should have been one of us."

Nate reached to touch one of the plaques on the wall, Rudy's name alongside his team. "Could have been," he said. "Pappy still has the last word on the rotations."

"He wouldn't."

"No," Nate agreed. One of the many reasons Pappy was so good at his job was that he wouldn't let something like a prospective moon landing sway his commitment to fairness, to keeping the rotation in order, to putting the mission first. "He wouldn't." He leaned against Rudy's desk. "It would have been nice, though. To have one of us not be here because…" he gestured upwards.

Brad was inspecting a photo of Rudy shaking the President's hand as he said, "It should have been you."

Nate couldn't keep himself from startling at that, turning to look at Brad, who didn't raise his head. There hadn't been a moment in the program when each of them hadn't wanted it to be them, ultimately, standing up there tonight in the shadow of the lunar lander – when each of them hadn't secretly even _believed_ that somehow, it would be them. "I got to be first," he said. "I've had my chance at the history books."

"This is the one they'll remember, though." Brad did look up at that, meeting his eyes. "This is the one that matters."

"Then fuck them, Colbert," Nate said without hesitating. "Fuck them, and fuck you, if that's how you look at it. It was guys like us who made this happen. Like you, and me, and your engineer corps, Pappy's guys, Gunny's guys. You designed the fucking _switches_ that got Armstrong to the moon, and that's what you think?"

Brad looked at him steadily. "No," he said, mildly. "Just checking that's not what _you_ think." He didn't quite smile, but the ice of his eyes thawed a little, the edges of them crinkling.

Nate gave a little nod, conceding the point, and turned for the bottle of scotch that someone had left on top of Rudy's desk. "I never did."

"I know." Nate lifted the bottle to refill his own glass, then tilted it in Brad's direction, a peace offering. "Being grounded is basically balls."

"Pure balls," Nate agreed. He poured Brad's drink with a steady hand and set the bottle back down on the desk.

"It's a small club," Brad said. "Those of us who've been up."

"Getting bigger," Nate pointed out. "And there's a new club now." He crossed to the window, looking up at the bright glow of the moon above the shadows of partygoers crossing the lawn.

"Ours was first," Brad replied. "What was that you said about the history books?"

Nate shrugged. "They're still being written," he said, and together they stood at the window and watched clouds pass over the face of the moon.

 

_"And it's been a long way, but we're here." – Nate Fick_

Brad was so engrossed in the modifications he was sketching out that he almost didn't bother answering his phone when it rang. In fact, he ignored it the first three times, and it wasn't until the fourth time startled him into knocking a stack of blueprints off his desk with his elbow that he grabbed the receiver and all but yelled, " _What_ , Ray?"

There was a somewhat breathless laugh on the other end, and he realized his mistake just before Nate asked him, "Are you here?"

"You're gonna have to clarify 'here,' LT," Brad pointed out, stretching the cord to its limit to lean over and pick up the papers he'd knocked over.

"I haven't been a Lieutenant in a decade, Brad," Nate reminded him. "And I meant _here_. Houston."

"Oh." Brad looked around his office and took longer than he probably should have to figure out which one it was. "No," he finally replied, "I'm at the Cape."

"Good. That's...that's perfect," Nate said, sounding distracted and out of breath. "Just...stay there, okay?" Brad heard shuffling on the other end of the line. "Don't go anywhere."

Brad looked down at his desk. "Where would I go?" he asked dryly.

"Look, I'm just..." there was a clatter, and Nate cursed under his breath. "I'm going to be there in a few hours." He paused. "You haven't talked to Pappy, have you?"

That made Brad pause in cleaning up his mess. "Nate?" he asked, settling back to lean against his desk. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine, Brad," Nate told him. "Everything is..." his voice caught a little, like he had run out of words, and then Brad could hear him moving around again. "Just...stay there, and don't...don't go talking to people, okay? I want... I'll see you in a couple hours." The line went dead.

Brad blinked at the receiver in his hand for a moment or two, then reached up to the desk to set it back into his cradle. He was tempted to call down the hall to Gunny, to see if he knew what was going on, but there was a push on from the higher-ups for him to get these plans to Godfather as soon as humanly possible, so instead he sat there on the floor, shuffling his blueprints back into a workable order, and then settled back into his chair, only pausing a while later when Walt knocked quietly on the door and stuck his head in.

"Coffee?" he offered, holding out a steaming cup.

"Hasser, you are a lifesaver," Brad told him, and reached out for it gratefully. "Somebody bothered to _tell_ you that you didn't have to keep working for me after I left the astronaut office, right?"

"Sometime in the last eight years or so, you mean?" he asked, his mouth curving up into a smile. "I think that might have gotten mentioned, yes, sir."

Brad breathed out a laugh. "And you keep bringing me coffee _why_ , exactly?"

"Because I'm an incredibly decent person?" Walt offered. "Or possibly because between Fick, Person, Gunny, Doc, and Patrick, I've been charged with making sure that you occasionally eat, sleep, and caffeinate, and there are a variety of unpleasant fates awaiting me if I fail."

Brad laughed and waved him back towards the door. "Well, you can inform my crew of overprotective nannies that I'm sufficiently taken care of for the night." Walt backed out into the hallway smiling, and collided directly with Nate, who was standing there shifting from foot to foot. "Ah, here's one of them now," Brad remarked.

"It's a wonder NASA has kept you employed this long, Walt," Nate said, a tiny smile playing at his lips. "They tend to appreciate people who show just a little bit of discretion."

Walt shrugged. "I've made myself invaluable, sir," he said.

Nate laughed. "Indeed you have," he agreed. He waited until Walt had headed off down the hallway before he came into Brad's office and shut the door behind him.

Brad set his coffee aside and folded his hands on his desk. "Commander," he said in greeting.

"Captain," Nate replied with a nod.

"Still a civilian, Nate," Brad reminded him.

"Still a _Marine_ ," Nate said dismissively, and he sank down into the chair across from Brad, letting his bag fall to the floor with a thump.

"You have news," Brad prompted.

"I have..." Nate seemed to consider his words for a moment. "Yeah," he finally agreed. "I do. I have news." He shifted a little in his chair, and then his face was splitting into the kind of grin that Brad hadn't seen from him in what felt like a lifetime. "I have a _mission_ , Brad."

"You...have..." Brad repeated, and he took in the way Nate's fingers were tight against the arms of the chair, the way his eyes were as wide and young and hopeful as the first morning Brad had ever seen him. "They're giving you the moon?" he finally managed.

"They're giving me the moon." Brad sat there, stunned, taking in the way that the years had seemingly dropped from Nate's face, the way he was practically vibrating, sitting there across from him. "I just got the call from Pappy. They wanted me out here for some tests. They've assigned me to 13."

"Jesus," Brad said. " _Nate_."

"I know."

"You're going to the moon."

"I _know_."

Brad shook his head. "You're..." he looked down at his plans. "Thirteen," he repeated. "I'm designing this fucker, right here," he tapped the diagram of the LEM's control panel, "for _you_."

Nate leaned over the desk and tapped his finger just below the window. "Scratch my name in right there, so everybody knows it's mine." He grinned up at Brad. "Better be neat about it, though, or NASA's going to think you're scribbling rude words into their spacecrafts again."

"That was Ray, not me," Brad objected.

"And who put him up to it?"

"If I recall correctly, actually, it was you."

Nate smiled up at him and their eyes caught and held for just a moment too long, Nate unguarded in his excitement, Brad wondering where exactly this version of Nate had been hiding for the past few years. He kicked his bottom desk drawer open and leaned over to produce a bottle. "In celebration?" he offered.

Nate looked from him to the diagrams on his desk. "Only if you swear you're going to quit work for the night," he said. "I'm not having my lunar module designed by some engineer on a celebratory bender."

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Brad asked, grinning as he crossed the office to grab two coffee mugs from the table by the window.

"Firmly planted here on earth, thank you very much," Nate said. He reached to take one of the mugs after Brad had poured, and clinked the glasses together. "To the moon," he said.

"And to you being the first of us to walk on it," Brad agreed, toasting him and drinking.

Nate made a face. "You've heard of a guy named Armstrong, right?" he asked. "And a few of his friends? Aldrin, and Conrad, and Bean?"

"The first of _us_ ," Brad reiterated, gesturing between them. "Ray and Poke quit, you and Pappy and I were grounded, Rudy's been fighting too much with mission control to _ever_ get a good mission again, and..." he trailed off.

"And Trombley," Nate finished. He tilted his glass towards Brad's window, where the launchpad complex was just barely visible in the dying light. "Yeah. Of all of us, who would have thought it'd be me?"

Brad's mouth twisted into the ghost of a smile, and he raised the hand not holding his mug. Nate shook his head and laughed quietly, but looked pleased as he tipped back in his chair and settled his feet against the edge of Brad's desk, lifting his mug back to his lips.

It had been years since they had done this - just them, holed up in an office too late at night, surrounded by work and not thinking about it at all. Brad found himself telling increasingly more ridiculous stories about the engineer corps, and Nate filled him in on the ridiculousness he was facing working beside Pappy in mission control, and a few hours later they were sprawled on the floor against the wall of the office, passing the bottle between them, having long since given up on the mugs.

Brad tilted his head back against the wall, imagining all of them crowded into Poke's living room again, waving Nate on as he hovered on the ladder to his spacecraft. "Fuck," he said aloud, and Nate shot him a questioning look as he passed the bottle back over.

"Fuck what?" he asks.

"Fuck _you_ ," Brad says, grinning like it was the height of hilarity, and Nate smiled back appreciatively. Then his smile dissolved, and his brow furrowed a little.

"You're not mad, are you?" he asked, kneeling up and looking at Brad with such intent frankness that Brad finds himself relieved that it was him in the room, and not some kind of reporter.

"At you?" Brad asked. "You'd know if I was mad at you, Nate. Trust me."

Nate laughed a little, then sobered again. "Not at me, just...that I get to go up again."

Brad blinked. He raised the bottle to his lips to give himself time to consider it. "No," he finally said. "I'm an engineer. I was an engineer before I joined the Marines, I was one while I was an astronaut, and I'm one now that I'm not an astronaut anymore. I'm good at it, even," he added. "Probably better at it than I ever was at flying. You...you were born to be a fucking hero, Nate. Go do that some more."

An almost bitter smile twisted at Nate's lips. "I'm not a hero," he objected, letting his head tip back against the wall.

"First American in space? I'd say you are."

"I'm not," Nate insisted, kneeling closer to Brad, touching his shoulders to steady himself. "I'm just a pilot."

"A pilot in _space_ ," Brad said seriously, which made Nate's mouth curve up slowly until he breathed out a quiet laugh and then he was shaking, holding onto Brad's shoulder, practically _giggling_.

"So are _you_ ," Nate reminded him, his fingers catching at the edge of Brad's lapel, where his gold astronaut pin was still fixed. "You can give me all the bullshit about heroics and engineering you like, Colbert, but I know you. You forget." He leaned closer, into Brad's space. "I've known you a long time now."

"Yeah," Brad agreed, reaching out to steady Nate, waiting until he tilted to lean against the wall again. "Too fucking long."

Nate held his glass up again and tilted it towards Brad. "To not knowing any heroes," he said, and Brad clinked his gently against it, both of them meaning exactly the opposite.

  
____________________________

 

EPILOGUE: KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, 1998

"I got a call," Wright continued, "a few months back. A man offering me an exclusive." He chuckled. "I told him that I'd been retired from the business for longer than he'd probably been alive, and he laughed at me." He looked into the camera. "Nate Fick, it turns out, has a laugh that one doesn’t forget easily. He said that he had been Colbert's first call, and that I was his. He reminded me of a deal I'd made, a lifetime ago, to follow every mission those seven men took. He reminded me that I'd returned to NASA to shoot a story when Patrick finally went up in '75, and he wanted to know if I felt like taking my camera out of retirement, one more time, in the service of the space program."

"What was your answer?" asked the reporter.

"I told him that there wasn't a chance I'd do it for NASA, not after all these years. But for Colbert? For all seven of those infuriatingly brilliant and heroic men?" He shrugged and held out his hands. "Well, here I am."

 

_"Like Colbert, I had temporarily traveled back in time to help record the long-term impact of space…My photo of Colbert's liftoff was the final picture of my professional career." – Evan Wright_


End file.
